After years of hindering economic growth, housing added to Gross Domestic Product in 2012, an important reversal given the sector's key role in pulling the nation's economy out of the doldrums in past recessions.

According to the magazine, the BND estimates that Russians have deposited more than €20 billion ($26 billion) in Cypriot banks, more than the island nation's estimated €18 billion gross domestic product.

In science:

Indeed, prior to our modern technological era, and for millennia, most of what is called Gross National Product, or GNP, was produced in agriculture which could easily involve as many as 90 percent of the general population.